Yesterday German neighbouring rights collection society GEMA announced to file a case for principal proceedings against YouTube. Other collection societies have partnered with GEMA for the challenge in Germany including AKM (Austria), ASCAP (VS), BMI (VS) and SABAM (Belgium).

Earlier this month a Hamburg court ruled in interlocutory proceedings that GEMA doesn’t have an urgent interest in an order to block access to neighbouring rights protected content from its members on YouTube. GEMA had long known that the contested songs were available on YouTube.

The German judge however indicated that there might be good reasons to believe that YouTube would have a duty to prevent illegal uploads, but GEMA can only ask for such a measure in main proceedings. Today GEMA announced it would do so in the next weeks to come.

GEMA wants to prevent YouTube from making available online 75 compositions from its members. The licensing agreement between GEMA and YouTube expired in March 2009. Negotiations for a new license agreement were stalled.

Source: Billboard.biz